At the 2024 Video Game Awards last week, Naughty Dog released the announcement trailer for its first new game franchise in ten years. Called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it’s centered around a bounty hunter in a late 20th century-style sci-fi world, and it looks like an exciting, ambitious turn for the studio behind games like “The Last Of Us,” “Uncharted,” “Jak and Daxter,” and “Crash Bandicoot.” To all of us at Jalopnik, the best part of the trailer is the reveal of the hero’s Porsche spaceship.
The trailer doesn’t show any gameplay, but it does establish the story and its characters, seemingly through the game’s opening cinematic. It all opens with a shot of the protagonist’s spaceship, which looks really sick and more distinctive than most generic sci-fi ships. Notably, the ship is branded as a Porsche in a way that’s impossible to miss, and its red and white livery is reminiscent of classic Porsche race cars. While not mentioned in the game’s official description or website, another shot in the trailer shows the ship is called the Porsche 984 Tempest NDX, and its steering wheel (or yoke, I guess?) has the Porsche crest in its center.
This isn’t Porsche’s first foray into designing a spaceship, believe it or not. Back in 2019 Porsche collaborated with Lucasfilm on a “Star Wars” spaceship that was built at a scale model and shown at the “Rise of Skywalker” premiere, but it was never actually used in a movie or video game. Earlier this year, Porsche released skins for D.Va’s mech in Overwatch 2 inspired by the new Macan EV.
We also get to see a lot of the ship’s cockpit when main character Jordan A. Mun gets ready to land on a dangerous planet. The 984 Tempest has tons of incredible buttons, keyboards, switches, levers and lights like all of our favorite ’80s sci-fi classics from “Blade Runner” to “Star Wars,” but with some fun slightly newer tech thrown in, like a TV playing anime through a DVD player and a cool integrated Sony CD player in the ship that she plays Pet Shop Boys on. It seems like the ship might serve as Mun’s home base, at least in the intro of the story.
Here’s what Naughty Dog’s head Neil Druckmann has to say about Intergalactic:
You have been dying to know what’s next for us, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to answer: Naughty Dog’s next game is Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, currently in development for the PlayStation 5 console. We’ve been working on this brand-new adventure since 2020! This game is shaping up to be our wildest, most creative story yet.
Intergalactic stars our newest protagonist, Jordan A. Mun, a dangerous bounty hunter who ends up stranded on Sempiria – a distant planet whose communication with the outside universe went dark hundreds of years ago. In fact, anyone who’s flown to it hoping to unravel its mysterious past was never heard from again. Jordan will have to use all her skills and wits if she hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit.
Beyond that, we’re keeping everything about the story under wraps – at least for now. What we can tell you is that this game lives up to the Naughty Dog tradition of creating an emotional, character-driven epic journey. Our narrative goals are rivaled only by our gameplay ambitions. This will be the deepest gameplay in Naughty Dog’s history, taking our learnings from our previous franchises and pushing them beyond anything we’ve ever done before.
Jordan is played by the talented Tati Gabrielle, who leads a stellar cast (pun intended!). Eagle-eyed players might spot some of the other cast members in the trailer. We’ll reveal more of our ensemble down the line.
Our incredible voyage into the cosmos also needs an equally incredible soundtrack. As tremendous fans of their work, I’m excited to announce our collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who’ll be scoring Intergalactic! The guys are cooking, and the trailer is just a small tease of their work for the game.
We know you’re eager for more – and trust us, we’re very eager to share more with you. For now, though, it’s time to put our heads back down and keep cranking away on Jordan’s adventure.
A soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross? How can I not be excited for this? Sadly, Naughty Dog hasn’t said anything about how far along in development Intergalactic is. Given that it’s been in the works for half a decade now, hopefully we won’t have to wait for that much longer.
